ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Imran Khan said on Sunday that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s regime might conduct a false flag operation against Pakistan by terming the Kashmir freedom movement “terrorism” and accusing Pakistan of backing it.

In a series of tweets, PM Khan mentioned relentless oppressive and inhuman tactics the Modi government was pursuing in India-held Kashmir through illegal annexation and brutal use of force.

“Modi’s RSS-inspired doctrine on IOJK (Indian Occupied Jammu & Kashmir) very clear: First, deprive Kashmiris of their right of self determination by illegal annexation of an Occupied territory. Second, treat them as less than human by a three-pronged approach,” he said.

He said the Modi doctrine had first deprived Kashmiris of their right to self-determination by illegal annexation of an occupied territory.

Mr Khan said the Indian government also treated Kashmiris as less human by a three-pronged approach, “One by trying to crush them with brutal force including the use of inhumane weapons like pellet guns against women and children,” he added.

He said Modi’s regime had imposed an inhumane lockdown, depriving Kashmiris of basic necessities from food to medicines.

He said another inhumane act of the Indian government was that it committed mass arrest of Kashmiris, especially young people, and isolating held Kashmir from the world by cutting off all communication links.

Mr Khan had already said in an interview with the foreign media that India might undertake a deceptive “false flag operation” in occupied Kashmir to try to justify a military action against Pakistan, adding that Pakistan would be forced to respond.

He had feared that a false action by India could escalate tension between the two nuclear-armed countries and such a situation should be alarming for the world.

India stripped Kashmiris of their seven-decade-long special autonomy through a rushed presidential order on Aug 5 last year.

Innocent Kashmiris have been under a curfew by the Modi’s regime for last nine months and they have been deprived of their basic human rights. The whole world is behaving like a silent spectator on the matter.

On Feb 26, 2019 India undertook an airstrike at Balakot when its warplanes crossed the border and dropped bombs in the vicinity of the town of Balakot in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

The government had announced that the Indian planes as dropped their payload in an uninhabited wooded hilltop area near Balakot.

India, confirming the airstrike later the same day, characterised it to be a pre-emptive strike directed against what it called “a terrorist training camp” and claimed that it caused a “large number” casualties

In a tit-for-tat airstrike the next day, the Pakistan military retaliated by shooting down an Indian warplane and capturing its pilot. However, the captured Indian pilot was returned to his country on March 1.

The airstrikes were the first time since the India-Pakistan war of 1971 that warplanes of either country crossed the Line of Control and also since both states have become nuclear powers.

Published in Dawn, May 18th, 2020